PC Workshop Warrington acknowledges even the better quality systems suffer from a lack of good housekeeping (regular maintenance) where extra scans for malware etc are carried out on a regular basis otherwise the result will be a gradual slow down of the system which eventually leads to virtual stagnation. This was the case with this particular ladies laptop which had great specs but running awful when she brought it in to PC Workshop.

The HP I5 laptop which is a good make and should be capable of click and go not click and go make a cup of tea was running as slow we’ve seen for a while, this can be caused by numerous reasons and once the data was secured on PC Workshops external back up drive we can go about diagnosing what is the root of the problem.

With the system so slow any action we take would not be practical on a laptop running so poorly so the hard drive is removed for further analysis on a PC Workshop diagnostic in house computer.

Once set up as a slave drive on the diagnostic bench the first test is on the hard drive itself to ensure its mechanically sound and capable of running at speed if it passes than we can look at the actual fragmentation of the drive and how badly the clusters of data are being catagorised. We also take note of the size and availability of the used and unused areas of the drive, is it full of long unused programmes that haven’t been utilised since Adam was a lad?

PC Workshop next step is to carry out a complete scan of the drive for viruses, trojans and general malware that builds up over time if there is no general housekeeping policy in place or if it is not maintained.

This will in all probability take hours and no doubt will find infiltrations on the system, which will be deleted and the system cleansed of all corruption.

If after all this the system is still sluggish we can reformat the entire drive and and reinstall a fresh copy of the operating system along with all the latest drivers required for the system to run like new (but better).

This was the case in this instance and the turnaround time was still within 24 hours which is a target we set for ourselves and rarely fall down on, we at

PC Workshop understand the urgency of having the information you require readily to hand and will always strive to help.

The customer was quite amazed at the difference we had made to the pace of the laptop and promised to “spread the word” – which she went onto do on the review site “free index”

If you’re laptop performs like “running in deep mud” then give PC Workshop a ring, you will not be disappointed.